'Najib did too many wrongs'

KUALA LUMPUR: PRIME Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has accused his predecessor, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, of accumulating a string of wrongdoings, which required the authorities to sift through all of them in stages.

He said this task would require time and that it was impossible to bring to book all the offences made by the past administration at one go.

“There are many charges against Najib, many wrong things that he has done.

“We have to choose which case to proceed first. Now there are two cases against him, but there are many more and it will take time. We need to get the facts right, like evidence and documents, to support the case.

“I’m sure that, in time, we will (get the charges going), but investigations take a long time because sometimes we don’t get the full cooperation of people who know the facts. Sometimes, it is difficult to get documents to back the allegations made,” Dr Mahathir said after chairing the Pakatan Harapan Presidential Council meeting at Yayasan Selangor near here yesterday.

In July, Najib was slapped with three counts of criminal breach of trust and one count of abuse of power for gratification involving RM4 billion from SRC International Sdn Bhd since 2011.

Last month, he found himself in the dock again, this time to face three charges under Section 4(1)(b) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001, for receiving RM42 million in illegal proceeds linked to SRC International.

He was charged with electronically receiving the monies, which were purportedly proceeds of illegal activities, at an AmIslamic Bank branch in Jalan Raja Chulan here between Dec 26, 2014 and Feb 10, 2015.

Dr Mahathir had been consistently pointing out Najib’s long list of wrongdoings.

In March, two months before Pakatan Harapan won the 14th General Election, Dr Mahathir had said Najib had committed at least 62 wrongdoings since becoming prime minister in 2009.

Yesterday, he said the effects of the previous administration’s wrongdoings were still seen.

He said there were stubborn civil servants still loyal to the previous administration who refused to pay salaries of officers of ministers in the new government.

He said these rogue civil servants were “sabotaging the newly-elected government”.

Dr Mahathir, in revealing this, said these civil servants caused problems for the implementation of government policies by not paying the salaries of newly-appointed officers of ministries for four months.

He said this was due to the damage done to the government machinery.

“There are some civil servants who do not want to implement policies approved by the government... There are some officers still loyal to Najib Razak.”

“They (new officers) have not been paid their salary for four months because there are others in the civil service who felt there must be something wrong with their (new officers’) appointments.